With three East Hamptoners in the lineup, the Sag Harbor Whalers sailed to a 6-0 win over the South Shore Clippers in a Hamptons Collegiate Baseball League game at Sag Harbor’s Mashashimuet Park Sunday afternoon.
Will Darrell started and did very well. It was 6-0 Whalers when the left-handed Vassar sophomore gave way to a sidearmer, John Keane, in the top of the fourth inning, with two outs and two on. Keane, after getting four Clippers out, was relieved by Will Shelton with two gone in the fifth, and Hunter Eberhart, another Bonacker, who pitched the seventh, finished up.
The Clippers, whose players hail from all over the Island and are based this season at the PAL complex in Holtsville, got only one hit that afternoon — a single in the top of the second — while the Whalers had seven, the most formidable being Jack Gold’s 398-foot home run over the center-field fence in leading off the bottom of the first inning.
During the three and two-third innings he worked, Darrell, a big left-hander, gave up no runs, one hit, struck out six, and walked three. He was taken out of the game by the Whalers’ coach, Nate Fish (who also coaches the Israeli under-23 team that is playing in Switzerland now), after walking two straight batters when two were down in the top of the fourth.
Gold’s leadoff homer, on the second pitch he saw, was followed soon after by two more runs, one coming in on an overthrow of second base, and the other scoring on the sixth batter Joey Patane’s infield hit.
The Whalers put three more across in their third. Teddy Cashman, the son of Brian Cashman, the general manager of the New York Yankees, and Lucas Pierce hit back-to-back singles to lead it off, with Cashman scoring on a subsequent error by the Clippers’ second baseman on a ball hit his way by Declan Ryan. Patane then came up big again with a two-run line-drive base hit to right field. Those six runs were more than enough for the Whalers, who improved their record to 12-11 as a result of the victory.
As of that day they stood in third place in league play, behind the Shelter Island Bucks (15-9) and the North Fork Ospreys (14-10), and ahead of the Clippers (10-10), the Southampton Breakers (9-11), and the Westhampton Aviators (7-16).
The six locals on the Whalers are Darrell, Eberhart, Tucker Genovesi, the center fielder, who hits second in the lineup, Tucker Schiavoni, one of three catchers the team has, Kris Vinski, formerly of Bridgehampton High School’s Killer Bees, and Brett Borcherding, whose pitching in the playoffs had a lot to do with the Whalers winning the league championship in 2022.
“Baseball’s my life now,” Eberhart said before the game began. In addition to pitching for the Whalers, he’s helping Vinny Alversa, his former East Hampton High School coach, oversee the five Riptide 9-through-13-year-old youth teams that are playing summer ball in Brookhaven.
As of Sunday, Eberhart, who has transferred from the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minn., to Penn State Berks in Reading, was 2-1 as a starter and had made three relief appearances. Darrell, who was Vassar’s fourth starter as a freshman this past season, was 2-1 as a Whaler starter, Keane having been credited with Sunday’s win.
This week the Whalers were to play the Ospreys away on Monday, and the Clippers away on Tuesday. The Aviators are to play the Whalers at Mashashimuet today at 5. The Whalers will be at home against the Breakers on Sunday at 2 and 4:30.
